Why SEGA? WHY?
Alien Syndrome is a top-down shooter much in the vein of hack'n'slashes like Diablo. You play as a gun-toting gal who's on a mission to explore some space-station that seems infested and overrun with ugly monsters of all shapes and sizes. Sound pretty good? Well...it actually did sound good to me. However, the developer of this game managed to screw it up pretty bad.
Gameplay- It has all the basics that you'd need for a game of this type: four-player coop, lots of loot, leveling, tons of monsters and bosses to kill. Yet it also fails to deliver much of anything in the way of content. There are very few types of guns and little reason to really pick one type over the other. You'll just get the same type of gun, but upgraded in very basic fashion. There will never be that satisfying point where you'll have some really awesome gear because it'll pretty much resemble everything else you've had for the entire game. There's option for melee weapons and, while the motion controls respond well, there's really no point because guns are just better in every aspect. The monsters are pretty much the same type over and over again, and it lacks a good amount of variety in gameplay as you'll pretty much memorize how each monster approaches you...not that you'll notice because you'll just be firing like crazy and hoping everything just dies. To spice things up, they added a minigame that's a bit like trauma center...except it's really tedious and unrewarding.
Presentation- This game looks baaaaaaaad. The textures are muddy and ugly. The character looks horrendous. The monsters look like crap. There's really not much to say here. It's one of the worst looking games on the Wii. Story is not even worth mentioning. She talks boring stuff and goes from bland level to bland level.
All right. Let me make this quick and easy. This game is not good. The only way to enjoy this game is through the offline multiplayer as there really aren't many four-player games on the Wii. It does have a place...but that's because no one else will make a Diablo-style game. On top of its bad presentation, repetitive environments and monsters, and lack of awesome looking gear...it's also a buggy mess. The menu interface is broken. You might be pointing and clicking at one thing and getting the wrong response, leveling wrong skills or putting points in the wrong area.
Rent? Buy? If you MUST have a four-player local diablo-style game for the Wii...you could rent it, if only to see how poorly made it is. And hey...you can always have some fun...even with broken, bland, generic games. That's the only reason I gave it two stars. I played it with a friend and...it was pretty mindless, but it worked. The only other option would be Marvel Ultimate Alliance and I've never tried that.
