Alien Syndrome for Wii Reviews by Gamers

Alien Syndrome has gotten plenty of mediocre to negative press and my expectations for the game were suitably low going into it. However, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be and proved somewhat addictive. It can be fun, but it has flaws. In the game you play Aileen Harding who needs to blast away at a bunch of creatures that have been mutated by an alien organism. The story is pretty useless as you get berated by your uncle and other male characters via com unit (because they couldn't be bothered to fight an extraterrestrial ground war). The game plays like a sci-fi version of your typical hack-n-slash, like X-Men Legends, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance or even Diablo II, which isn't a bad thing. You level up by blasting or hacking your way through hordes of creatures, occasional mini-bosses and the very infrequent boss. Gaining levels and proficiencies and finding cool weapons and armor are the high points of the game and prove engaging. You also unlock higher difficulty settings so you can keep on blasting. Also worth note is the use of the Wii remotes IR sensor for targeting which makes strafing and firing quick and easy. There are some problems with the gameplay though. The nunchuk's motion sensor is used to swing the camera, which means every time you scratch your forehead, the screen looks like a time-warp. Killing streams of monsters gets pretty repetitive and the challenge is minimal. You'll find that even boss characters are no real threat and by the time you unlock hard, you'll be even more powerful than the first time through. Graphics and sound are serviceable at best and the voice-acting is lackluster. This game takes about 20 hours first time through, but there were several points at which I think they could have ended the game. It started to feel like they were artificially stretching the length before the quarter mark. It just gets old, but it's still fun. It's definitely worth renting, flaws and all.