Alien blasting Shooter / RPG is what Alien Syndrome is. It's not a mineless shooter, character development is a must!
The character development is cool, as you level up your skills (health, endurance, dexterity, and accuracy). You also have to level up your ability to use different weapons or wear different armor. You get to select different weapons and armor based on your skill level, but there a limit to how much she can carry. Also some weapons and armors come with stat bonus or limits. You have a support robot that can assist you in battle, recharge your health, shield and develop different weapons for you, but you have to find upgrades for it to get better weapons, armor, or supplies but it all comes at a cost and you stay within the limits of how much Aileen (the main character) can carry. Basically it's your traveling item shop.
The graphics aren't the best the PSP has to off, but they are good. The Audio is good for the most part but there is an annoying bug that cut the audio at the end of cut scene or radio chatter between you and your commander.
Camera controls are easy to get use to (just hold triangle and move the analog stick). If you want to strafe just hold either fire button ( X for weapon 1 or light attack and circle for weapon 2 or heavy attack) you could set strafing to the R button if you wanted to. Square is for picking up item left by aliens you defeated or other actions. The d-pad is used for checking the map recharging your energy gage / health, or switching between ranged or melee weapons. It's an easy set-up to get use to just know there no lock on feature but you do get to see where you shot will go and some of the weapons you unlock later in the game like homing missiles will track target to a limit degree, or the fragmentation fireball which can affect multiple aliens from one shot. It's a long shooter-rpg with some cool element, weapons, and aliens to take on. The character leveling is very deep since you have to take different thing into account, Do you want better weapons or better armor, which weapon class do you want to increase your proficiency in; energy, projectile, explosive, or flame (different aliens are weak to certain weapons). Also which weapon combo is good for attacking the aliens in the current level (you get to carry two different ranged weapons and one melee weapon). These kind of thing come up in the course of the adventure and really make the game more than a mind-less shooter. So while it may not be every gamer cup of tea, it is worth a look. I know I really enjoy it.