The Best shooter on the Saturn!
Alien Trilogy is based on the first 3 Alien films. You play as Ripley, and have to fight off various Alien Species - including 3 Queens - and make it to the end. The game takes place in the main locations from the film, like the Prison and the Bone Ship.
GAMEPLAY:
Like most Shooters of this time, Alien Trilogy is pretty simple when it comes to Objectives as well as the actual game mechanics. The controls are similar to other Saturn shooters like Doom and Duke Nukem. The D - pad is for movement, Left and Right triggers to strafe and then the face buttons are for Shooting, Opening doors and switching weapons.
The game runs just as smooth as the Playstation version if not more and the game seems better suited to the Saturn controller.
Most of the game's levels have simple but varied objectives. For example, the first level requires you to destroy barrels blocking Marines from entering the complex. Others have you killing enemy soldiers and picking up there ID tags. Occasionally there will be a level where you just have to destroy the Aliens and make it to the finish and in some levels you can simply refill your weapons and pick up some health packs.
There's a decent variety of weapons in the game, all of them from the films themselves. These inlude a Pistol, Shotgun, Pulse Rifle, Smart Gun and Flamethrower.
GRAPHICS: The graphics are great considering the time this game was released and they still manage to hold up quite well now. The Saturn version has slightly better graphics than the other versions but you need to look closely to really see the difference. My only complaint is that the framerate tends to dip quite a bit when there's a lot of action on the screen.
The graphics add a lot of atmosphere to the game as they really take you back to the films. Each of the 3 locations are recreated perfectly as well as the aliens themselves. All the Aliens from the movies are in the game, ranging from Face huggers and chestburtsers to Warriors and dog Aliens.
SOUND:
I wasn't too happy with the sound. It features the same music and sound effects as other versions but the quality has been reduced quite a lot. It's not so bad that it stops from playing but it doesn't make much sense that the Gameplay and Graphics got a boost while the sound suffered.
OVERALL:
The Saturn version of Alien Trilogy, in my opinion is the definative version. While the sound lacks the quality of the Playstation version, the Graphics and most importantly, the Gameplay are greatly improved. Alien Trilogy still manages to hold up well compared to games of today and should definately be a part of your collection