Games of the Abstract: Aliens - Extermination (2006)

 

Developer: Play Mechanix

Publisher: Global VR

One or Two Players

Arcade

 

Aliens (1986), and this is specifically James Cameron's sequel to the 1979 Alien, has left a lasting mark. I will tip my hat to the first by Ridley Scott, but between them, never was there a case with Cameron's big sequel which has itself left a lasting mark on popular culture. Hilariously, the Aliens: Extermination cabinet, a large console with a platform to stand on with your big gun, was positioned next to a basketball hoop cabinet, which had the looping sound bite of "Game over man!", one of the more famous lines from Aliens itself.

Alien as an intellectual property, originating from a haunted house in space film with the titular figures designed Swiss artist H.R. Giger, tapped into biomorphic horror, as altered and mutated over the years from Ridley Scott's source film, a spectrum of interpretations just found in the videogame adaptations. Alien: Isolation (2014) for example is the kind of game I may never play, simply because jumping all the time is not something I wish to experience, even if the concept of a game that brings back why the titular figures were terrifying, through just one you have to flee from, sounds like a complete success. The arcade games over the decades took a different direction, a vast contrast as Capcom's Alien Vs. Predator (1994), not the first person shooter franchise, was a Japanese beat-em-up which allowed you to take down xenomorphs more easily. Even before Aliens: Extermination, the blunt if cool sound Alien 3: The Gun (1993) existed for anyone who wanted a light gun game to plug facehuggers.

Aliens: Extermination is a jaunt. This is not a scary game, and whilst it has a plot to its four campaign levels, about xenomorphs and mutations artificially made by an evil corporation that is effectively the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the franchise in anything but name, this is slight. Instead, this feels clearly indebted to Behind Enemy Lines (1997), a Sega shooter set within a military jeep and having a giant machine gun peripheral bolted on the cabinet, two, with constant vibration when fire, but switching a military shooter to being the marines of the Aliens worlds. I make the comparison not only for the peripheral, but because I swear that the voice over man, when he shouts "Ammo!", when you replenish it, is a sound clip directly taken from the older game or that someone from Play Mechanix, the company famous for Big Buck Hunter (2000) and its series, wanted the exact sounding replication as a fan of obscurer arcade games.

This is, truthfully, a game that is fun but I admit is more generic for me. Over four long levels, each ends with a boss, and barring the truth that mowing down xenomorphs does undercut the tension of the creatures that were once meant to evoke fears of unnatural reproduction and their monstrous forms, it is more of a spectacle than survival horror. It is also, honestly, an intellectual property I have little interest in. The original Alien, and Alien 3 (1992), the divisive David Fincher film, even Alien Resurrection (1997), the really less regarded Jean-Pierre Jeunet sequel, are more interesting to me to revisit as three very different directions bringing their personalities to the material. Barring Prometheus (2012), one of Ridley Scott's returns to the franchise, I have less interest with anything else, and Aliens is the action film of the original franchise I have the least interest in. In terms of the game itself, this also factors in how, with no Sigourney Weaver stand-in, not even Bill Paxton, you are playing faceless grunts, and the original horrific nature of the titular creatures has been watered down. Play Mechanix worked on licenses like the Halo videogame franchise and The Walking Dead, bringing them to modern 2000s and 2010s arcades, and with Global VR they made a solid produced game here with this license. It is a solid lightgun game, the distinct touch that, alongside vibrating like mad when you fire and getting extremely warm when you play for a long time, the machine guns have a button on both the front and the side. The front is for power-ups like flamethrower fuel or missiles, whilst the side is for grenades.

Beyond this, firing like mad is the rule, though getting the ammo and power-ups is important, especially as ammo for the machine is not infinite, and the handgun you end up with when that happens was not designed for a game like this. Aliens: Extermination is fun, but alongside my lack of interest in the iconography, this does not look interesting either. A lot of this is being pushed through similar sci-fi corridors and caves, which is not appealing, and by this point, a codified version of the aliens themselves exists without the initial horror of when the first was designed by Giger and brought to life. Their original, creepy form lingers occasionally - as when one sees the eggs pulsating on the floor, thinking of how a facehugger will leap out to kiss your face, I was automatically firing at the things before that happened - but that is slight when they melt like butter to bullets, especially as headshots help clear through them. With no radical attempt to change them up either, barring one boss which is a xenomorph with wings looking closer to a fantasy game enemy, this feels lacking in style. Global VR, which its more original licenses as a company, has something far more idiosyncratic, with an appealingly cheesy tone in a modern 2010s sense, with Shh...! Welcome to Frightfearland for Arcade (2011), shooting zombie clowns and sentient rollercoaster bosses in an amusement park of hell, a lightgun game that I see of interest, if sadly obscurer without an intellectual property of recognition, due to its personality just at a screenshot glance.

Personality becomes the crippling flaw to Aliens: Extermination. Eventually a few more non-alien enemies appear, even hijacking the third stage, be it android grunts to killer machines, and Aliens: Extermination even becomes more grey in how you find yourself even, as a boss, fighting turret towers in a row. Again, I admit my biases as much to this. If this had been Starship Troopers arcade game for example, specifically the 1997 Paul Verhoeven film with the satirical elements, not a po-faced attempted at taking it serious, I would be like a pig in muck, but Aliens: Extermiantion whilst well made does feel lacking. This is curious, if disappointing, when you have a game which is solid in production, and presentation, and gameplay, but is average as an experience. Attempts at increasing the game's enemies to red xenomorphs, to comically phallic little critters sticking out the mouths of victims, horde the screen do feel fun to mow down, but whilst there is enough to enjoy here, it does feel bland in the world of lightgun cabinets even with what can be found in a modern day one, let alone the classic games in the canon.