| Alien Resurrection | |
|---|---|
 North American box art | |
| Developer | Argonaut Games |
| Publisher | Fox Interactive |
| Producer | Ben Tuszynski |
| Designer | Paul Crocker |
| Programmer | Simon Hargrave |
| Artist | Michael Wilson |
| Platform | PlayStation |
| Release | |
| Genres | First-person shooter,survival horror |
| Mode | Single-player |
Alien Resurrection is a 2000first-person shooter game developed byArgonaut Games and published byFox Interactive for thePlayStation. Based on the 1997film of the same name, the game was originally intended to coincide with the film's release, but was mired indevelopment hell for several years, finally being completed and released in 2000.
Following the same basic plot of the movie, the game takes place years after the events ofAlien 3 and follows a clonedLt. Ellen Ripley awaking aboard the USM Auriga and trying to escape from thexenomorph-infested research spaceshipUSM Auriga along with a crew of mercenaries.
When the Xenomorphs bred from the queen that was extracted from her cloned body escape containment and begin running rampant aboard the Auriga, Ripley must unite with a group of rag-tag mercenaries to escape the vessel.
The game is a first person shooter (FPS) with survival horror elements. It consists of ten levels, the first nine taking place in the Xenomorph-infestedUSM Auriga, with the last aboard the mercenary shipBetty.
The player uses four different characters from the movie. Ripley is the main playable character for a majority of the game's levels, while Call, DiStephano, and Christie each get their own level as well. Each character has their own special equipment. Some players have different weapons. The selection includes a laser rifle, double barrel shotgun, grenade launcher, Shock rifle, flamer-thrower and a rocket launcher.
The player must complete different tasks to progress across the game. These include killing clones and ejecting overheating escape pods.
In addition to traditional drone aliens, the player also faces marines andfacehuggers (if the player is implanted with an alien, they must track down a device to remove it, or the creature will hatch and the game ends), later fighting boss creatures such as the alien queen and the newborn.
Work on the game began in early 1996. Lacking any initial directive from Fox Interactive beyond that it be a game for theAlien franchise, Argonaut designed agame engine with an overhead shooter format inspired by the recent gameLoaded.[1] Pleased with the prototype, Fox Interactive green lit the project and further assigned the team to create a game which would appear in the film.[1] Fox announced thatAlien Resurrection would be released in late 1997 on the Sony PlayStation,Sega Saturn, andMicrosoft Windows.[2]
Fox weekly shipped the team boxes of scripts, storyboards, and raw footage from the film as reference material.[1] After working on the game for a year, Argonaut Games decided that theLoaded genre had become outdated, and restarted development as a 3D action-adventure in the vein ofTomb Raider, which had been released after work onAlien Resurrection started.[1] Frustrated at having a year's worth of work completely scrapped, a significant fraction of the development team quit the project.[1] In November 1997, by which time the Sega Saturn version had been dropped, Fox announced a Spring 1998 release window for the title.[3] After this release window was missed, the game was announced for a Fall 1998 release.[4]
Morale dropped further when the team were invited to a private screening of the film; they found it underwhelming at best, and were disappointed that the game they had made for the film,Atom Zone, only appeared very briefly.[1] The team struggled over technical difficulties with their 3D game engine for over a year, and in late 1998 decided to change the format a second time, to a first-person shooter. Having the game in first person removed the fundamental problems in the game's development; senior designer Christopher Smith recalled, "It was a moment where everything went, 'right'. If it remained in the other perspective it would've got cancelled. I'd have put money on that."[1]
The game was one of the first games to useboth analogue sticks of theDualShock controller for simultaneous movement and aiming.[1] According to Ben Broth, a tester at Fox Interactive, the game's twin stick control scheme immediately went down well with the game's QA team.[1] The game also supports thePlayStation Mouse.[1]
The game was finally released exclusively for the Sony PlayStation in 2000 (20 October in the US and 1 December in Europe),[5] almost three years after the film ran its course in theaters.
In 2023, a developer on the game revealed a secretcheat code he implemented. The code allows the launching ofunlicensed, burned discs.[6]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 61/100[7] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| AllGame |   [8] |
| CNET Gamecenter | 6/10[9] |
| Edge | 8/10[10] |
| Electronic Gaming Monthly | 6.33/10[11][a] |
| Eurogamer | 4/10[12] |
| Game Informer | 6/10[13] |
| GameFan | (MVS) 81%[14] 79%[15][b] |
| GameSpot | 4.7/10[16] |
| IGN | 6.5/10[17] |
| Next Generation | [18] |
| Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine | [19] |
| Maxim | 6/10[20] |
The video game received "mixed or average" reviews, according to thereview aggregation websiteMetacritic.[7] Critics praised the game's atmosphere[16] and frequently scary gameplay.[12] However, criticism was directed at the graphics, as well as the harsh difficulty level.[1] Jeff Lundrigan ofNextGen said that the game had "Nice atmosphere, but what starts out frustrating quickly becomes kinda slow and dull."[18]
Steven Garrett ofGameSpot criticised the then-uncommon dual analogue stick control scheme, describing the game as "almost unplayably difficult to control and unreasonably hard to enjoy".[16] Despite this, the control scheme would soon become standard for first-person shooters on consoles.[1]GamePro said that the game was "a fine first-person shooter, but unless you're a big fan of the films, there are even better options (Medal of Honor,Quake II) out there."[21][c]
The game sold 250,000 units.[22] It was ultimately a financial failure for Argonaut Games due to its lengthy development period.[23]
